[2] The character of Madame Solario also intrigued the director Joseph Losey, who put her as one of his three favourtie fictional heroines, alongside Clea by Lawrence Durrell and Anna Karenina.
[2] The novel had an especial appeal for him as it was fierce critic of an utterly privileged yet rotten milieu, obsessed with outward appearance; leaning on this theme avoided making the incestuous relation just a romantic story but demonstrated that in the end the relationship was the result of suffocation and past trauma.
The Russian is a wealthy, brutal and unbending man while Bernard is a young English virgin madly in love with Natalia; Eugène is "the accursed brother, a decadent Delon, pushy, seductive, making dangerous connections with all the attractive women he meets".
[3] He was happy to follow the novel and its ambiguity although he felt that he made things clearer in the film: that these two have suffered traumatic events in the past which have led to their behaviour but in an open way without violence, or excess.
[5] Féret commented that symbolically the lake – a dull, tranquil place with, in its depths, the unimaginable monster – was perfect, more so as it was where Huntington spent some childhood vacations.
The scene is set by the voice off of an innocent young English lord, Bernard, who describes the congenial atmosphere and rich or aristocratic guests staying at the Hôtel Bellevue on Lake Como.
Having fled France and lived in South America, he also needs money, and learning that she was disinherited by their step-father he notices the possibilities of advancement among the rich guests, urges her to join him in seducing one to improve their situations; they alight on an older marquis for her and his wife the marquise for Eugène, an arrangement which would keep them together for ever.
After the four partake a disputatious dinner, Natalia promises to see Kovanski, but he shoots himself when he discovers that brother and sister have secretly left the hotel at dawn; Bernard is desolate.
[7] Huntington's novel lays the foundation for Féret's inventiveness and talent, to create a "disturbing and dense" film, of atmosphere and tension, incestuous love, disguises and lies.
[9] The "scar on Eugène's right cheek-bone is like a breech in his angel mask"; and "the silver reflections of the lake cover dark depths surrounded by the bristling jaw-shaped mountains".
"On this chessboard of forbidden loves, he films in chiaroscuro an overwhelming game of passionate cruelty where the disturbing and intense acting of Cyril Descours" compels attention.